13 Jun 2012

Mobile Application Developers and their role in the Telecommunications Industry

He will be speaking tomorrow at 3pm on Day 2 of West and Central
Africa Com, taking place at King
Fahd Palace in Dakar, Senegal. He alongside 3 other panellists will discuss “How to encourage and support young ICT Entrepreneurs from
the region”.

Today he shares his views on “the role of Mobile Application
Developers in the Telecommunications Industry”.

There is a lot of discussion around mobile
applications at the moment. Mobile applications penetrate where the PC couldn’t
and still can’t go. They are way more personal and also easily accessible.

Applications make the mobile phone even more
personalized, as they provide a range of value added services like productivity
applications, integrated social networking and mobile gaming, etc, this is
where developers come in. Developers create mobile applications; they provide
the extra value on mobile phones apart from basic texting and calling. They
could be working as a corporate entity or as indie developers. The apps market
is largely populated by applications written by indie developers.

The
role developers play in the telecoms industry is quite simple, get consumers
using more data, voice and SMS services. This directly translates to higher
revenue for Mobile Network Operators, but developers have found it difficult to
monetize these applications due to highly unfavourable revenue sharing based on
short code billing; the nascent local apps market is being stifled.

Slow and unreliable data connectivity also
present challenges to developers in monetizing their applications via other
means such as advertising; without a critical mass of users, developers are not
able to generate meaningful revenue.

Mobile Networks can release payment API’s for
local mobile applications and guarantee developers at least 50% of the revenue
generated. This would foster the local apps development market and in turn lead
to many more applications built and used in the continent than currently exist.
This could also have the effect of duplicating short code services as mobile
applications generating value beyond 160 characters. It will lead to a higher
number of consumers adopting high end devices because of the value delivered by
local mobile applications.

The number of African mobile apps is steadily
increasing despite the inability to easily monetize them. Mobile Networks can
generate even higher revenue by fostering the ecosystem which will in turn
drive users to use more data, voice and SMS services.

West Africa Com

East Africa Com

Nigeria Com

Africa Com

Welcome

Welcome to the Com World Series Blog. As producers of the leading telecoms, media and ICT events for developing markets, we focus on news & views that affect everyone operating in the telecoms ecosystem in Africa, the Middle East and Eurasia.